


You're not in chains, are you?

by LightDescending



Series: headlong might save a life [2]
Category: Terminator (Movies), Terminator: Dark Fate
Genre: A note - Dani is not in this fic; but she is mentioned, Apologies, Brief mentions of PTSD, F/F, Future shit, Gen, Grace Harper Lives, Movie: Terminator: Dark Fate, This is primarily a conversation between Sarah and Grace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:14:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22486912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LightDescending/pseuds/LightDescending
Summary: “I owe you an apology.”Sarah had expected the silence to be broken sooner or later, but not by that. Watching as Grace wipes sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand, leaving a streak of grease and organo-synthetic blood in its wake, she mulls the words over like they’re something sour.“…Why?”Grace and Sarah, over the deactivated body of a Terminator, have a conversation that's long overdue.A coda to "Headlong might save a life", though it should function as a standalone.
Relationships: Grace Harper/Dani Ramos, Sarah Connor & Grace Harper
Series: headlong might save a life [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1705918
Comments: 16
Kudos: 70





	You're not in chains, are you?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tyellas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/gifts).



> This was written as a belated birthday gift for Tyellas, who requested a fic from Sarah or Carl's perspective in the same universe as _Headlong_.  
> A brief note if you haven't read "Headlong might save a life": this assumes a fix-it in which Grace survives the events of 2020; I'm skipping the "how", but the "why" is that they end up at a steelworks rather than at the hydroelectric dam, and things go much better for them. Throughout that fic, Grace and Dani are in an established relationship.

**2021**

“I owe you an apology.”

Sarah had expected the silence to be broken sooner or later, but not by that. Watching as Grace wipes sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand, leaving a streak of grease and organo-synthetic blood in its wake, she mulls the words over like they’re something sour.

“…Why?”

In front of them is what used to be a Terminator. A T-800 model. Sarah is here, as insurance, ready to blast this thing into oblivion if it reactivates. Grace assures her that it won’t. Something something statistically improbable. Twelve months gone by since the Rev-9, and Sarah still has to fight off her skepticism when it comes to Grace’s assessments of danger. The woman’s skewed. Hypervigilant as fuck in the most mundane situations – the barking of a dog can set her off for hours. It’s not that Sarah can’t relate – just that, here and now, Grace seems almost more comfortable than she’s been for months.

Grace doesn’t reply yet. Too busy glaring into the cracked-open metal skull in front of her, fingers probing along a set of minute circuits before they withdraw. Grace wipes them on a rag tucked into her front pocket, shifts a little. Crouched, kneeling on the heels of her boots. Her eyes stare into the middle distance before she nods to herself. Sarah’s watched her do this before, and as her fingers skim along her inner wrist, she finally puts together what it reminds her of. Like scrolling through the contents on a phone screen, Grace is flicking through a database inside her own head. Schematics, probably. Design plans. Sarah gets an unpleasant shiver down her spine and wonders again what they fuck they’re playing at.

Part of her hopes this doesn’t work. The rest of her knows it will.

Precedent.

She clamps down on that thought before it can overwhelm her. It’s so hot here that she could swear the sun is what’s whining, rather than the crickets buzzing from their hiding places in the long grass. High summer in Montana. Or Alberta. Hard to say, with the fields this huge and open, and no visible border in sight. This Terminator dropped out of the sky in a coulee, one that winds its way forward and into Canada. Another Cyberdyne model. Grace had been the one to track it down, to alert them, somehow. After disabling it, they took refuge in what must have been a mounted police outpost, to get this insane plan underway. Thankfully, there’s shade here beside the building, among the sage and the prairie wildflowers and the tall, worn sandstone slopes that rise up to either side of them. It smells like dust, to her. Willows dipping into the river nearby, where Dani’s gone to fish, and aspen whispering in small, thin-trunked stands. Sarah’s distracted herself by plotting twelve exit strategies from their present location, figured out the best cover spots, by the time Grace deigns to respond.

 _“Yes,_ ” she breathes in triumph. “Found what I was looking for. Alright. It’s going to take a while to execute the code, once I get started. Time for a break.”

Collapsing back into a seated position, Grace levels her blue stare at Sarah. How much of their colour is natural, Sarah doesn’t want to guess. She tightens her grip on the gun in her hand as Grace takes a long, measured drink of water – half the bottle, in all estimation.

“Would you stop wasting my time,” Sarah snaps, “and make your point?”

“I’m choosing my words carefully,” Grace replies, and then drains the last of the water down. “Trust me, getting that first bit out of my mouth as an initiation wasn’t even the hardest part about this. Sit?”

Involuntarily, Sarah’s eyes flicker to the Terminator splayed out and half-broken apart, right next to where Grace has sprawled, long-limbed and relaxed. Of course, Grace notices.

“Or stand.” Grace heaves a sigh and scuffs a hand through her hair. She’s going to be filthy by the time this whole procedure is over. “Look. This isn’t about… anything recent. But I’ve been alive for a year longer than I expected to be, and I guess that’s because of you. Partially. I shouldn’t have discounted you, back when everything was happening. I feel like you were an… underutilized asset.”

Sarah lets that sink in for a while before scoffing. “You really know how to make a woman feel special.”

Grace shoots her an affronted _look_ that makes Sarah laugh once, sharp and short.

“Can I give you some advice? If you pay someone – _anyone_ – a compliment, try not to make it so militarized. I get it, you’re a solder from the future, but even Kyle had more bedside manner and that man was _fractured_. An _underutilized asset_?”

“I said this was _hard_.”

“…Yeah, well. I suppose sincerity counts for something.” Ultimately it’s easiest to position herself back against the wooden building, lean against the greying planks that make up its sides. She can watch the body better, this way, and the solidity behind her is comforting.

“I guess I didn’t take you seriously,” Grace says carefully. “Which was a mistake. I thought you would slow us down. And I was… wrong.”

“Hmph. When did you start to figure that out?”

“Take a guess.” They both know Sarah’s not going to do that. Grace looks out into the distance. “Unbelievable. All that fuckery in the south and up here… almost entirely unguarded. Fucking hypocrites.”

Sarah makes a noise of assent far back in her throat. 

That’s one of the more comforting aspects of the dynamic with Grace. This whole time, they’ve been able to leave certain things unsaid, right from the moment that Grace began, _if they separate her from me…_

No, earlier. Doesn't mean Sarah hadn't attempted to force the issue, to make Grace use her words. From the moment in the truck, when Sarah looked at Grace holding Dani’s head in her lap and felt a pang of cold through her chest. Sense memory. Sarah carries so much of the past around with her and she’s never sure when it’s going to bite into her like a rattlesnake. Maybe that’s why she reacted the way she had with Dani, to the point that she ignored other things Grace had been saying… which, in retrospect, should have clued her in to Dani’s future identity a lot sooner. That, and the fact that everything between them _screamed_ romantic entanglement. She’d been here before, and yet everything was new, and none of it involved her. Sarah had prodded, and pushed, worried at the edges of Dani and Grace’s relationship like it was a wound mostly-closed but itching as it healed. In the cabin of Dani’s uncle, calling over for food as though Dani was offering her any. Or the comments she’d made on the train, branding Dani with assumptions because it stung, the whole damn affair. Sarah could accept being left behind by a world that she’d failed in. But she fucking _refused_ to be replaced.

So far, she hasn’t been. Just… integrated.

And now here Grace is, telling her more or less directly, that she’s needed.

Has been the whole time.

"Nice, for a change,” she mutters. 

“Huh?” Grace blinks her way out of a grimace, looking up at Sarah quizzically.

“Nothing. You’d better get a move on. Day’s wasting. Dani’ll be back soon.”

“…Sure.” Grace shakes her head, but Sarah lets her posture stay relaxed even though Grace crouches back, hunched over the inert form of the Terminator they’re aiming to reprogram. “Remind me, what did the one you dealt with before say its mission was?”

“A few key protocols changed. Protection, not Termination.”

“Gotcha.”

A bee loops slowly through the air in front of her, flying from clover to black-eyed Susan and back to clover again. Some bird of prey circles overhead, ever-vigilant. Sarah watches it as Grace works for a few moments, before straightening. Step by step, she approaches, pulling something from her bag as she goes.

“Hey. Here.” Sarah says, as Grace half-turns. She meets Sarah’s eyes before taking the bottle of water being offered to her. Saves Sarah her dignity, returning her focus to the machine in front of her. Sitting, close at hand, Sarah lets the butt of her gun rest in the soft earth beside her. She holds it that way, loosely, observing as code is realigned before her eyes, even if she can’t see it happening.

**Author's Note:**

> If ya'll are ever out in Alberta, please check out Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park (or any other parks in the area of the Montana border), which is more or less what inspired the setting for this particular fic. Coulees used to be used by rum-runners back in the day.  
> Is the title a little melodramatic? Yes, but I pulled it from Moments by Mary Oliver and I think it fits the theme in a pinch! 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
